


before you can meet again

by loveandthetruth



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Drunk Sex, F/M, First Time, Post-Coital Cuddling, Sarcastic Hawke (Dragon Age), Second Chances, Sweet Cullen Rutherford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 01:37:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18201743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/pseuds/loveandthetruth
Summary: Hawke smiled up at him with the kind of dazed, happy smile that only the intoxicated were truly capable of. "Hello."Cullen just wants to go to bed. Hawke just wants to ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  go to bed.





	before you can meet again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



Cullen sighed and finally put the last request to the side of the desk, where it would be ready to be sent out in the morning, but no sooner had he risen from his desk with a yawn, ready to sleep – or at least to lie down – than the door thumped open. Hawke caught herself before she fell forward to the ground, a mostly full bottle swinging precariously in one hand.

"Hawke," he said, a little awed, after he'd recovered from flinching terribly at her entrance. He had known she was arriving, and over the day rumours had begun swirling that the Champion of Kirkwall was somewhere within the walls, as well as comments on why she was hiding her face that ranged from malicious to merciful.

He drifted out from behind the desk. It was true that he probably wouldn't have gone to find her even if he hadn't been drowning in paperwork; they had never been very clear on where they stood with each other back then, though somehow they had never been the enemies they were supposed to have been. 

She squinted and stepped forward. "There you are," she said, and he tensed a little, unsure if she had been looking for him or if she was just being glib. His tower wasn't so far from the tavern and she was pleasantly drunk. It wasn't inconceivable that she had just stumbled in by accident.

She stumbled and he closed the distance to catch her without even thinking about it, and she smiled up at him with the kind of dazed, happy smile that only the intoxicated were truly capable of. "Hello."

He breathed in sharply and righted her, though she stayed in his space, closing enough that he could smell the wine on her breath.

She looked at him steadily for a long moment, before drifting away – stepping around the room, swaying a little, poking at his papers, at the books on his shelves. It had been a long time since Kirkwall. Cullen's mind kept slipping on the exact number of years, as if he didn't really want to remember all that wasted time, or as if he couldn't count them in any way that made sense. She didn't look much different, except more tired, and he bit down on a reflexive apology when he wondered what had happened to the estate in Kirkwall, the home she couldn't go back to. He would not run short of amends to make in his lifetime, and words would not suffice.

Keeping a careful distance, he drifted a little behind her – wary of her spilling the bottle on something important or falling over and hurting herself – but otherwise said nothing, until Hawke leaned back against the bookshelf finally, and gave him a measured look.

"We've unfinished business, haven't we?" She didn't wait for a reply. "We should see to that, I think, now that you're not a templar any more."

Cullen's breath caught. There was a single candle on the desk, and though it was no hearthfire, the way the light flickered across her face put him right back in her home those years ago, the instant before she had kissed him. The memory twisted in him oddly, and found himself tempted once more. He had never been able to fathom his reasons for what had happened back then, but now there was only a clear, simple want.

"You're drunk," he said, "again. We should absolutely not." As if his words reminded her, she put the bottle to her mouth and he sighed, exasperated. "Don't – don't drink all of that. You–"

"Why, do you want some?"

He hesitated, and then held his hand out. He judged there to be almost three quarters of the bottle left, which he proceeded to drink until he could put the empty bottle on the desk. It was a decent wine, and went down smoothly, thought it didn't do more than leave him relaxed enough that it was easy to huff a laugh at her bemused expression. One of the more interesting side effects of long term lyrium consumption was an increased tolerance to alcohol, and now she couldn't drink it herself.

"Well, well." She blinked at him and then smiled that dazed smile again, leaning into him until they both stumbled back into the desk. It felt good when she kissed his neck, good enough that his eyes drifted shut.

"Please, it's late." He sighed again, and leaned a little back, not trusting himself to put his hands on her. "I want to go to bed."

"Well, what a coincidence, so do I." She moved over to the ladder, leaned back against it, and leered at him. "There's one up here, I believe."

She started pulling herself up the ladder, just as heedless of his unhappy sigh as she was of the fact that she was barely coordinated enough to put her feet on the rungs without looking. She slipped once on the bottom rung without harm, but when she slipped from the fourth Cullen caught her around the waist and crowded in behind her, nose bumping into her back occasionally as they climbed together. If she was going up there anyway, perhaps the least he could do was make sure she didn't knock her chin falling down the ladder and bite through her tongue.

It was probably more of an accident than a provocative act when she flopped forward onto the floor of his room and crawled, ungainly, off the ladder. She had gotten herself back on her feet by the time he made it the rest of the way up and he led her gently away from it lest she fall down through the gap, while she looked around curiously.

"No wonder you're not as warm as you used to be, you sleep in a tower with a giant hole in it."

"It's not giant," he said, more tired that defensive. "It makes the space seems less small, I suppose. More light down in the office. And the air does me good on hard nights." 

"Hard nights?" She gave him long up and down look, missing – or ignoring – the point entirely, and raised her arm as if to take a swig of a bottle, seemingly forgetting that it had been left empty on the desk below. She pouted as she let her hand drop to her side, and then smirked at him. "Maybe you should tell me about this hardness."

He groaned, rolling his eyes with his whole body until he overbalanced and let himself fall back onto the bed. "Maker," he breathed softly, shaking his head at the ceiling. Hawke came to the edge of the bed and, after a moment, crawled up his body and straddled his hips. "Hawke."

_ Marian, _ he wanted to say, but maybe that was to presume too much. The faint tempting want he had felt downstairs fell a little deeper and he found himself longing a little to put his fingers through her hair.

"I need something to hold on to and I seem to have misplaced my bottle."

She put her hands on his chest, leaning heavily, and slid them down a little. The muscle pulled and jumped under her hands, and Cullen was torn, uncertain for a moment whether he should lean into her touch as he found himself wanting to, but when she dragged her hands back up his body to plant them either side of his head, and leaned her mouth down to his, he kissed back without hesitation.

It was more tender than he'd expected, slow and heavy, but undemanding. He found his hands trailing up her arms and into her hair, a little longer than he remembered, and when he pulled her a little closer she hummed and smiled against his mouth.

She was still smiling when she leaned up again to pull her tunic over her head as Cullen – hesitating for just a moment – put his hands on her hips and shifted her a little, rocking her hips against his. She groaned a little and rocked again, a little harder, making him echo the sound. 

It was all a surprise to him. The way she had wanted him before, he had justified to himself as her grief. Now there was nothing left but a simple want, though he still couldn't imagine why it should be him. He found himself glad of it, his hands growing heavy on her where they stroked over her skin, or curled in her hair, and she sounded like she was somewhere she wanted to be.

She didn't seem to be in a hurry either. The rest of their clothes followed slowly, all deep kisses and dragging hands, until she was holding his cock in her hand and sinking down on him by inches, putting one of his hands on her hips and guiding the other to cover a breast. He watched her as she moved, rolling her hips. 

After a few minutes, Cullen lifted himself to hold her, helping the motion of her hips with his own hands, the sounds of her moans filling his ear where she dropped her head onto his shoulder, and then he shifted and turned them so she was on her back under him and arching into the weight of his body. 

It felt good, everything he had wanted and not wanted all those years ago, though there was nothing particularly special about it, just the comfortable thrust and shift of their bodies against each other and the sounds of their rough breathing, desperation building until it broke over them within only a few heartbeats of the other. 

They lay pressed together for a long moment in the silence that ensued. There was a little guilt creeping into Cullen's chest that he didn't want acknowledge, not when her hands stayed holding his sweat slick back even when her breathing had slowed. She was still capable of surprising him though, turning onto her side as Cullen reached – mostly reflexively, not really imaging that she'd want to stay the night – to pull up the blankets, until she was plastered all over his back, one arm around him and their legs tangled together.

He laughed, low and wry. "A cuddler. I never would have imagined."

"Go away," she mumbled.

"You're making that a little difficult," he said, as he settled down more comfortably. Then he added, almost an afterthought, "Why should I leave anyway, it's my bed and my tower."

"You know, you're not so bad for a Templar," she said.

He tensed a little, reflexively. "You're not so bad for an asshole," he said after a moment, very quietly.

There was a huff of laughter against the back of his neck, her ribs shaking at his back, and in just a few moments more, the last of the tension left her body as she fell asleep leaning against him. He couldn't follow her so easily, but he took her hand where it rested against his chest, stroking her knuckles with his thumb and watching the moonlight move across the floor.

They night wore on slowly, and whenever he woke up from a doze, Hawke was still there sleeping next to him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sort of coda to [afraid of all that i've built](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10641564) and I'm gifting it to Wednesday because their prompt reminded me that I've been wanting to write it so much and finally got it done.


End file.
